Rollaway Deployable Kevlar Felt Ballistic Protection for Arch-Shaped Shelters (1001-437)

Triton Systems Inc., supported by Production Products of St. Louis MO, proposes to develop a flexible sandwich construction and storage/deployment mechanism to provide specification ballistic protection for the air-supported TEMPER tent and related shelters. The principal innovation is to use a thin high density Kevlar felt as the ballistic-resistant core of a flexible sandwich, whose bonded faces provide weather/abrasion resistance and, optionally, chem-bio protection and/or fire retardant features. In order to erect the flexible ballistic protection within the air supported TEMPER tent we propose to store the flexible sandwich on rolls or drums whose length corresponds to the longitudinal spacing between airbeams in the shelter. Formed aluminum tracks will be assembled to the airbeams with Velcro straps and the flexible sandwich edge treatments will slide up and down on these tracks in the manner of high end window treatments. Should the stiffness of the rolled ballistic sandwich membrane be too small in the width dimension to avoid sagging, fiberglass battens will be added in a manner not to impede smooth rolling and unrolling of the protective curtains. A subscale working model of the flexible ballistic curtain will be fabricated in the Phase I to demonstrate deployment and stowage functioning.